Martial art Myths

"The founders of Martial Arts weren’t gods or saints, but real, ordinary men and women. They worked with skill and instinct, but not magic. "

- Phil Pierce - Martial arts Author

This page will outline some commonly believed martial arts myths and then go some way to explain why they're not true! Most people have heard that you can push your nose into your brain - Not true! Lots of people believe you need to be mega fit to practice martial arts - Not true! Read below to see many more.

​This page will be updated regularly so check back and see why more martial arts myths get debunked.

1: You can kill somebody by shunting their nose up into the brain -

While any blow to the head can prove to be fatal, the idea that the nose bones can be driven intothe brain is a complete myth. Firstly, most of the “bones” in the nose is actually cartilage and thebones that are present are relatively fragile. Even if the nasal bones weren’t completely shattered,the holes in the skull are fair too small to let them through, only big enough for nerves and blood topass through. An upward strike could break these bones but they couldn’t be shunted through themuch denser bones of the skull. A death caused by striking here is caused by shock transmission,concussion or ruptured blood vessels; not forcing the nose into the brain!

2: You need to be *insert physical attribute* to do martial arts -

Strength? Flexibility? Dexterity? Agility? Coordination? Any other physical attribute to be effective atmartial arts. Having these things certainly won’t hurt your ability but having them isn’t a compulsorypart. The whole ideal of many martial arts is to overcome a person who is physically in a betterposition. Another myth is that people need to get fit before they start a martial art. They don’t.Doing the martial art will help you get fit. But more than that, the earlier you start training the betteroff you’ll be.

So these stories are often told down the generations of martial arts schools, they’re interestingstories but that’s about it.. Firstly is the idea that students only had one belt and as they progressedthey dyed their belt to the next colour. But because you could only dye it darker than the colourbefore, it would eventually wind up brown and then black. Sounds plausible, except the idea of usingcoloured Kyu grades is a relatively new idea. Jigoro Kano, founder of Judo, supposedly decided hisstudents (students of another master – Kawaishi) in France (and the rest of the western world)needed rewarding or they would stop training, this was in 1935. However, prior to this in 1886, Kanohad already distinguished between white and black belts.

The other myth tells the story of white belts training hard and never washing their belts as it wasseen to represent their knowledge. With a long time in training the belt would get stained withsweat and dirt and eventually turn black. So a martial artist with a black belt clearly had beenpracticing for a long time! Unfortunately this tale is also just a myth. Kano gave 2 of his seniorstudents the rank of Shodan (first black belt) before the Gi and belt were used to actually train in. Atthis time the black belt was purely ceremonial and therefore wouldn’t have turned black with dirt.Black belts and Gi’s we would recognise today didn’t come about until 1907.

4: Martial artists have to inform would be attackers of their skills -

This has got to be one of the silliest myths on this list. The only advantage you have is the element ofsurprise. Why would you throw that away by telling your attacker that you are willing to fight back?!And probably also give away the style you are trained in, it also takes away some of your selfdefence argument. It could be seen that you have entered into the engagement and haven’t shownyou are unwilling to fight. Unfortunately this myth is still prevalent, recently I was told by a studentthat his boxing coach had told him this, the worst part is the coach probably believed it too havingbeen told by his coach.

5: You can learn from books and videos -

You can learn from books and videos, that’s not a myth. But if you wanted to study martial arts thenbooks and videos are only supplementary to proper face to face personal instruction. Can you learnto swim from a book alone? Probably not. You might be able to get a general idea of what to do butuntil you’re dropped into a pool then you won’t know if what you think you know actually works.What if it doesn’t work? You are going to need someone to tell you where you are going wrong, orhow to improve. No book or video is going to be able to tell you that.